Monday, 31 July 2017

July's EME Window

With QSLs still arriving from previous 2m EME action, I was looking extra forward to
late July's very short window.

When last month's activity was interrupted by my 140W
brick amplifier catching fire, I was anxious to see if my repairs and homebrew
RFC would still allow me to play on the moon. With July's best-positioned
moonrises being too close to the sun (which was also rising at the same time), I
was only able to spend a short time over two days before the moon travelled too
far to the south and into my neighbour's trees.

Luckily I was rewarded
with what seemed like very good lunar conditions, enabling me to
easily work six different stations ... three of them being all-time new
ones and boosting
my EME initials total to 112.

In addition, DL1VPL told me
that he was able to copy me with his single 12el Yagi during the QSO with I2FAK! Needless to say, a
contact between two single Yagi stations would be truly remarkable. I've only
been able to copy a single Yagi station once over the years.

F4DJK's 4x11 el array

F5AQX's 4x11 el array

DJ9DBJ's 4x10 el array

I was
gratified to see that letting the smoke out of my little amplifier last
month apparently caused no permanent damage and the repair seems to be holding
up ... but I'll leave the bottom off for now just in case it gets any more crazy ideas.